Stoner

He turned in his chair and looked up. It was Katherine Driscoll, the young instructor who last year had sat in on his seminar. Since that time, though they sometimes met in the corridors and nodded, they had not really spoken to each other. Stoner was aware that he was dimly annoyed by this confrontation; he did not wish to be reminded of the seminar and of what had ensued from it. He pushed his chair back and got awkwardly to his feet.

"Miss Driscoll," he said soberly and motioned to the chair beside his desk. She gazed at him for a moment; her eyes were large and dark, and he thought that her face was extraordinarily pale. With a slight ducking motion of the head she moved away from him and took the chair to which he vaguely motioned.

Stoner seated himself again and stared at her for a moment without really seeing her. Then, aware that his regard of her might be taken as rudeness, he tried to smile, and he murmured an inane, automatic question about her classes.

She spoke abruptly. "You--you said once that you would be willing to look over my dissertation whenever I had a good start on it."

"Yes," Stoner said and nodded. "I believe I did. Of course." Then, for the first time, he noticed that she clutched a folder of papers in her lap.

"Of course, if you're busy," she said tentatively.

"Not at all," Stoner said, trying to put some enthusiasm in his voice. "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to sound distracted."

She hesitantly lifted the folder toward him. He took it, hefted it, and smiled at her. "I thought you would be further along than this," he said.

"I was," she said. "But I started over. I'm taking a new tack, and--and I'll be grateful if you'll tell me what you think."

He smiled at her again and nodded; he did not know what to say. They sat in awkward silence for a moment.

Finally he said, "When do you need this back?"

She shook her head. "Any time. Whenever you can get around to it."

"I don't want to hold you up," he said. "How about this coming Friday? That should give me plenty of time. About three o'clock?"

She rose as abruptly as she had sat down. "Thank you," she said. "I don't want to be a bother. Thank you." And she turned and walked, slim and erect, out of his office.

He held the folder in his hands for a few moments, staring at it. Then he put it on his desk and got back to his freshman themes.

That was on a Tuesday, and for the next two days the manuscript lay untouched on his desk. For reasons that he did not fully understand, he could not bring himself to open the folder, to begin the reading which a few months before would have been a duty of pleasure. He watched it warily, as if it were an enemy that was trying to entice him again into a war that he had renounced.

And then it was Friday, and he still had not read it. He saw it lying accusingly on his desk in the morning when he gathered his books and papers for his eight o'clock class; when he returned at a little after nine he nearly decided to leave a note in Miss Driscoll's mailbox in the main office, begging off for another week; but he resolved to look at it hurriedly before his eleven o'clock class and say a few perfunctory words to her when she came by that afternoon. But he could not make himself get to it; and just before he had to leave for the class, his last of the day, he grabbed the folder from his desk, stuck it among his other papers, and hurried across campus to his classroom.

After the class was over at noon he was delayed by several students who needed to talk to him, so that it was after one o'clock when he was able to break away. He headed, with a kind of grim determination, toward the library; he intended to find an empty carrel and give the manuscript a hasty hour's reading before his three o'clock appointment with Miss Driscoll.

But even in the dim, familiar quiet of the library, in an empty carrel that he found hidden in the lower depths of the stacks, he had a hard time making himself look at the pages he carried with him. He opened other books and read paragraphs at random; he sat still, inhaling the musty odor that came from the old books. Finally he sighed; unable to put it off longer, he opened the folder and glanced hastily at the first pages.

At first only a nervous edge of his mind touched what he read; but gradually the words forced themselves upon him. He frowned and read more carefully. And then he was caught; he turned back to where he had begun, and his attention flowed upon the page. Yes, he said to himself, of course. Much of the material that she had given in her seminar report was contained here, but rearranged, reorganized, pointing in directions that he himself had only dimly glimpsed. My God, he said to himself in a kind of wonder; and his fingers trembled with excitement as he turned the pages.